Bottle Bouquet!

Unfortunately bottle bouquet does not develope in todays wines with high alcohol and high pH. This means almost no California wines made today will develope it. So for california wines an an aged wine IS NOT inherently better.

For the very few of us that like bottle bouquet better than tons of ripe fruit it is worth aging a wine for decades.

Not be a smart ass, but only by way of communication, that wine is sweet. don’t know the RS, but a couple of vintages ago, we tested it at over 1%.

However, it is also well-balanced, nicely fruity and does have some complexity. Not my choice for seafood, except for the right dish, but chicken in sauces, some simple pork preparations, etc, many first courses go perfectly well with the wine, just as a slightly sweet Riesling would work in those settings.

On the whole, I would choose a comparably structured Riesling, but your point, with which I agree, is that wine is not made by Commandment, and even sweet Chardonnay, made well, can be satisfying. I have chosen that wine from wine lists when it was the right choice for the setting and foods.

I also chose it for a group of winewriters have an independent dinner simply to show that we need to rise above preconceptions and generalizations. However, I hasten to add that most CA Chards at its price point are bone dry and suitably endowed with acidity.

Care to say where you make wine?

FYI I just had a Rombauer Chard at an event last week that was really nice and complex. I would have been proud to have made that wine.

If it does not mean what I think it means, then my apologies. In any event, my comments about the large and varied stylistic choices available to drinkers of CA Chards do stand. I am happy to admit that I get pretty peeved when all CA Chards seemingly get lumped together and then abused for being too soft, sweet, oaky, buttery, popcorny, alcoholic, etc, etc. I know better, and it disappoints me that those misleading, misinformed generalizations persist.